House Speaker John Boehner labeled President Obama’s speeches on student loans in three battleground states “pathetic” and called on his campaign to “pony up” by reimbursing the Treasury for the cost of the two-day trip.

Boehner said Obama is waging “fake” fights to win re-election. “The emperor has no clothes,” he said.

“This week the president traveled across the country on taxpayers dime at a cost of $179,000 an hour insisting that Congress fix a problem that we were already working on,” Boehner said Thursday at the Capitol, referring to student loan interest rates set to double on July 1. ”Frankly, I think this is beneath the dignity of the White House. Democrats and Republicans knew that this was going to take effect.”

“Democrats and Republicans fully expected this would be taken care of, and for the president to make a campaign issue out of this and then to travel to three battleground states and go to three large college campuses on taxpayers’ money and to try to make this a political issue is pathetic, and his campaign ought to be reimbursing the treasury for the cost of this trip.”

Boehner continued: “Here’s the president wasting time on a fake fight to try to gain his own re-election. These are the types of political stunts, and frankly they aren’t worth and worthy of his office. This is the biggest job in the world and I’ve never seen a president make it smaller…it’s as simple as this, ‘the emperor has no clothes.’”